On-farm Seed Production

Native Seed Production

Note we no longer produce native seed for retail sale. We however retain this for your information.

We are strong believers that biological diversity underpins sustainable land management and regenerative farming systems. Most of the plant diversity in Australian temperate grasslands, woodlands and grassy forests is in the ground layer – that is the diversity of grasses and forbs (wildflowers). Yet, revegetation and restoration still often concentrates on trees and shrubs and perhaps a very small number of grass or grass-like plant species (e.g. Lomandra spp.).

Our primary aims as a business are to firstly contribute to increasing awareness and knowledge of native ground layer species and secondly to conduct research that contributes to the body of knowledge on their management and role in sustaining ecosystem processes. As part of meeting these objectives we have begun producing and supplying quality seed of some of the less widely available native grass and forb species. Many of the species that we grow and supply are not reliably available through the larger seed merchants, but we hope this changes in coming years.

Our on–farm seed production areas have been established to ensure collection pressure on remnant populations is reduced and to increase the reliability of seed supply. We are working in partnership with Greening Australia and the Far South Coast Landcare Association in the development of the seed production area.

Establishing part of the Seed Production Area for the Far South Coast Landcare Association.

Our on-farm seed production area largely targets a range of ground layer species that were once widespread but due to past management and changes in soil nutrients often now occur as isolated populations. These species potentially play key roles is covering soils, enhancing pollinator and habitat complexity, reducing variability in pasture production and increasing drought tolerance of pastures.

Our priority is to limit regular collections from often small wild populations and to rather grow these species in small poly-culture crop type situations to maximise pollination, gene-flow, seed production and efficiency of seed harvest.

All of our initial collections have been based on Florabank guidelines and where possible include several source populations from a particular locality.

Craspedia variabilis in seed

The Farm

The farm is situated in the far south east corner of New South Wales 40km east of Bombala at 260m above sea level. The area provides challenging conditions for many plant species – our winters are very cold with regular frosts to -5°C and -6°C and summers can be scorching with temperatures often into the 40’s. Although we are relatively close to the coast, our climate is similar to that of the southern tablelands. The remnant ground layer vegetation is also suggestive of close links to the tablelands.